A British charter jet has had a close encounter with a UFO said to be "the size of a battleship."

The shocked pilot and crew of a Debonair BAe146 plane reported being buzzed by "a long cylindrical object" as they flew over the North Sea.
Three other pilots have also independently logged seeing the bright object 58 miles off the coast of Denmark.

Last night the Civil Aviation Authority confirmed a comprehensive report of the pilot's sighting had been received.
The report says the captain and crew first became aware of the object after the underside of the plane was immersed in "an incandescent light."

A CAA spokeswoman said: "The captain reported seeing an unnatural bright light below his aircraft while flying at 28,000 ft. The area below him was illuminated for about 10 seconds by incandescent light and it was certainly not a light from another plane.

"Three other aircraft saw it moving at a high speed or static. However, air traffic control were informed and they confirmed that there were no other planes in the vicinity.

"Then, five minutes later, there was a brief radar return from a spot 75 miles away. We believe there was no danger involved."
The Luton-based 96-seater plane was flying company executives from Linkoping, Sweden, to Humberside airport. A spokesman for Debonair, which runs cut-price flights throughout Europe, said chief executive Franco Mancassola had been informed that a "great red light in the sky" had been spotted near one of the company's planes.
At one stage, the report says, the object came to an abrupt halt before accelerating past the airliner at thousands of miles an hour.

A CAA source says the object was tracked by a military radar station in Yorkshire after it entered UK air space.

A spokesman for the 6,000 member British Pilots Association said: "We get reports of this nature from our members, but they are few and far between.

"In the past 10 years or so I would say there have been around six cases of UFOs being sighted.

"Many pilots are reluctant to make such claims because it tends to lay them open to ridicule. So when they do go as far as making a report we do expect it to be given credence."

A passenger jet's crew have reported a close encounter with an unidentified flying object.

They said that they noticed an "incandescent" light below their Debonair BAe 146 as it headed over the North Sea from Sweden to Humberside.

Then, they added, a long cylindrical silver-coloured object the size of a battleship flew alongside. The British plane's shocked captain saw what seemed to be rows of square portholes on the UFO before it vanished at "enormous speed."

The crew told the Defence Ministry about their sighting. An RAF radar station tracked the object, which was seen from three other planes.